Yes, it’s true! The US government is giving away totally free cell phones. But there is a catch. You must be super-poor or taking government charity to qualify to get a free cell phone!

Safelink is not about safety. Any cell phone can call 911, even without any service plan, and that’s why Safelink is a scam because it only pretends to help the poor stay safe.

Safelink keeps the public safe, not the users

My guess is that safelink is secretly being used by federal, state and local law enforcment to spy on people who accept government handouts. Because the government is paying for the safelink service, by law they have the right to eavesdrop on the conversations without getting a warrant. Brilliant!

Safelink could be a Godsend for state and local police.

SafeLink is a foreign company

This giveaway of free telephones is not part of the Obama economic stimulus package, and does not benefit Americans.

Just look at what it takes to qualify. All that is required is that you are a certified loser and government moocher:

“The process to qualify for Lifeline Service depends on the State you live in. In general, you may qualify if...

You already participate in other State or Federal assistance program such as Federal Public Housing Assistance, Food Stamps and Medicaid.ORYour total household income is at or below 135% of the poverty guidelines set by your State and/or the Federal Government.”

This article confirms that SafeLink is just a scam, paid for by taxpayers.

And it’s not just for lazy Americans; it comes in Spanish too, for illegal aliens:

“The site is also available in Spanish, leading to the not-too-unreasonable conclusion that a significant percentage of the applicants conceivably could be, may be, might be undocumented aliens.”

Si - Uncle Sam will get your ass a free cell phone

THIS IS DISGUSTING. Why should the taxpayers give Mexicans free cell phones if they won’t even bother to learn English?

Icky People also expresses shock at this ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars:

“This is a bizarre policy.

The U.S. Government has started giving out free cellphones, free service, and free minutes every month, plus rollover minutes, caller ID, call waiting, and voicemail to citizens who qualify.

Uncle Sam pays for everything. I'm not making this up.”

The working poor must get by with lesser cell phones

And if you think that this program was just to allow poor people to communicate in emergencies, think again. These free cell phones are not just for emergencies!

“Through our Lifeline Service you will receive FREE cellular service, a FREE cell phone, and FREE Minutes every month!

SafeLink Wireless Service does not cost anything – there are no contracts, no recurring fees and no monthly charges.”

This makes me sick, it’s absolutely outrageous.

Please write your congressman and have this stupid government giveaway changed. Cell phones for honest working poor is a great idea, but it's beyond offensive to give free luxury goods to people on welfare and food stamps.

Note: So far, SafeLink Mexican-owned free phones are only approved for people in Tennessee, Florida, Virginia, Georgia, Massachusetts, New York and parts of Michigan and Pennsylvania. Let's stop this foreign cash drain before it spreads to other states.

You may have missed the point about SafeLink. It may be a government sponsored scam.

SafeLink may just be a way for law enforcement to circumvent wiretapping laws. If the government owns the cell phones they have every right to eavesdrop on all telephone calls.

Studies confirm that welfare and food stamp recipients are far more likely to commit crimes than working citizens, so SafeLink may be an clever and inexpensive method to circumvent the Federal wiretapping laws!

Friday, May 29, 2009

The MMPI is among the world’s most validated test, an incredible exam of 500 true/false questions designed to give insights into personality. When I got my degree in Psychology, I was fascinated by all of the unobtrusive questions to detect lying, and personality dimensions.

The MMPI was designed using empirical methods on zillions of people, using proven statistical techniques to assess every dimension of ytour personality.

See below for an actual example of an MMPI personality assessment, it's quite impressive.

The validity of the MMPI is based on empirical statistics, using real-world collections where people with a known disorder will tend to answer a question in a certain way!

Often as not, psychologists don't fuly understand the "why" for a statistically significant correlations, but that's not important. All that counts is the predictivie validity of the answer!

Unobtrusive questions are used to disguise the ointent of the measured metrics. For excample, people with a certain combinations of disorders tend to be scared ot taking showers, and the innocent question "Do ytou prefer to take showers or baths" will reveal a dimension to the respondent's personality.

The most fascinating MMPI scale was the Machiavellian scale, called the “mach” scale. This is a MMPI scale devised to measure your propensity to be able to manipulate other people:

Significant levels of emotional upset are reported which may interfere with memory, concentration, abstraction and judgment.

Mr. Sample is not reflective or thoughtful which can limit insight and judgment. He does not try to understand the world in cognitive, rational ways.

Concentration difficulties are probable with Mr. Sample being distractible, preoccupied, and inattentive. This may cause Mr. Sample to miss important environmental cues leading to decreased judgment and coping.

Mr. Sample is likely to be concrete in his thinking due to personality factors despite his potential level of intellectual functioning as personality factors predispose Mr. Sample to overly focus on detail and miss general trends.

He is an extremely cognitively rigid individual who has fixed ideas from which he has trouble deviating. Mr. Sample may fail to take in additional information or alter his opinion once an idea is formed. Poor judgment and situational misperceptions can result from reacting in terms of these fixed beliefs without seeing if they match the current situation. At this level, delusional ideation may occur.

Due to a lack of self-confidence, Mr. Sample may be indecisive and have problems with decision-making.

Mr. Sample may show poor planning as he is severely cognitively impulsive. A lack of proper cognitive mediation and/or planning is likely as he often acts without considering consequences or alternative courses of action.

Due to his cognitive style, Mr. Sample may have severe difficulty learning by experience and may repeatedly make the same mistakes.

Severe racing thoughts and flight of ideas may be occurring which can result in cognitive impulsivity, poor concentration, inattention and misinterpretation of situations.

Severe obsessive ruminations and worries are reported that are very likely to disrupt Mr. Sample's cognitive efficiency. Levels of brooding over problems exist to the point where he may lose control of his thought processes.

I was raised in Albuquerque, home of many of the most outrageous lawsuits in the world, acts that precipitated the Stella awards, a hall-of-shame for American litigation.

just finished reading “The Stella Awards” book by Randy Cassingham, a tad dated, but a must-read for anyone interested in frivolous lawsuits and tort reform (also a popular web site).

The Stella award has the coffee cup from the Albuquerque incident, a case where a woman placed a hot cup of coffee between her legs, and sued McDonalds, winning millions of dollars:

The Stela award is modeled after the Albuquerque coffee case

The American legal system can be simply fixed, just require the losing party to post a surety bold to pay the legal bills of the loser, and require all judges to punish frivolous litigators.

This book on the Stella Awards is out-of-print, but you can get a copy on Amazon stores.

Urban legends on frivolous litigation

This one is a common “urban legend”, exposed by the Stella awards:

In November 2000 Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32 foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home, having joined the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver’s seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly the Winnie left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the handbook that he couldn't actually do this. He was awarded $1,750,000 plus a new Winnie. (Winnebago actually changed their handbooks on the back of this court case, just in case there are any other complete morons buying their vehicles.)

Here are the 2007 Stella award winners:

#3: Sentry Insurance Company. The company provided worker's compensation insurance for a Wisconsin "Meals on Wheels" program. Delivering a meal, a MoW volunteer (who was allegedly not even wearing boots) slipped and fell on a participant's driveway that had been cleared of snow, and Sentry had to pay to care for her resulting injuries. Sentry wanted its money back, so it sued the 81-year-old homeowner getting the Meals on Wheels service. It could have simply filed for "subrogation" from her homeowner's insurance company, but by naming her in the action, it dragged an old lady into court, reinforcing the image of insurance companies as concerned only about the bottom line, not "protecting" policyholders from loss.

#2: The family of Robert Hornbeck. Hornbeck volunteered for the Army and served a stint in Iraq. After getting home, he got drunk, wandered into a hotel's service area (passing "DANGER" warning signs), crawled into an air conditioning unit, and was severely cut when the machinery activated. Unable to care for himself due to his drunkenness, he bled to death. A tragedy, to be sure, but one solely caused by a supposedly responsible adult with military training. Despite his irresponsible behavior -- and his perhaps criminal trespassing -- Hornbeck's family sued the hotel for $10 million, as if it's reasonably foreseeable that some drunk fool would ignore warning signs and climb into its heavy duty machinery to sleep off his bender.

But those pale compared to...

The winner of the 2007 True Stella Award: Roy L. Pearson Jr. The 57-year-old Administrative Law Judge from Washington DC claims that a dry cleaner lost a pair of his pants, so he sued the mom-and-pop business for $65,462,500. That's right: more than $65 million for one pair of pants. Representing himself, Judge Pearson cried in court over the loss of his pants, whining that there certainly isn't a more compelling case in the District archives. But the Superior Court judge wasn't moved: he called the case "vexatious litigation", scolded Judge Pearson for his "bad faith", and awarded damages to the dry cleaners. But Pearson didn't take no for an answer: he's appealing the decision. And he has plenty of time on his hands, since he was dismissed from his job. Last we heard, Pearson's appeal is still pending.

“The 404 Error message was created by an unholy menagerie of vile atheists, Democrats, liberals and Godless Soviets in the Year of our Lord 1992.

We're told through electronic pathogens and demonic incantation rituals, they managed to create ways to electronically limit the amount of lost souls and seekers of truth that 'web servers' could process in a given minute.”

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

“In a scene echoing the horror movie Alien, Gavin staggered into his GP's surgery bleeding from his belly button.

His stunned GP Dr Joe Santos said: "It was like something from Alien. I didn't believe Gavin when he said something was coming out of his belly button until I saw him." Medics said the growth was a parasitic twin — Gavin’s identical brother who died in the womb early in their mum’s pregnancy. The 4cm foetus then became embedded in Gavin’s tissue and stayed in his stomach for the next 30 years.”

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Back before the Internet, database magazines vetted their authors. Sadly, today's web is chock full of posers and jerks, intent on ruining the power of the web and inserting profanity and sleeze into even the most innocent web searches.

But I still have the world’s shortest Appaloosa. This is "Spot", who is six feet long and only 20 inches tall!:

The world's shortest Appaloosa

She is a dwarf, like a Dachshund dog, normal sized body, but with super-short legs. We call her a “wiener horse”.

Spot is in season, and all mares in-season are total sluts, waving their fannies in the stallions face, begging to be bred by whatever stallion is handy. Can you imagine what would it be like if human women behaved like this?

Anyway, Jen3 accidently let Spot and King get together, and the resulting mayhem was quite funny:

(l to r) King, Jen3, Twinkie and Spot

Jen got some good exercise. Despite their small size, these critters can run mighty fast:

At one point, it did not look too good, but Jen managed to interrupt the act, much to King’s frustration and dismay:

Jen3 performs sexus interruptus

During all of this Twinkie (who is spayed) was quite upset, mad that her boyfriend was showing affection for some slutty mare!

This year we are breeding Dude at stud, hopefully get some new babies for nest year

It’s weird, because now the expected life of a new foal (30-35 years) exceeds our own life expectancy, so we need to make allowances for finding them good homes after we croak.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

This poem is displayed on a bronze plaque attached to a building at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Henrietta New York. I don’t remember the author name.

As a general rule I hate poetry, but this is a great poem; it rhymes real good:

Sometime when you’re feeling important,Sometime when your ego’sin bloom,Sometime when you take it for granted,You’re the best qualified man in the room.Sometime when you think that your passingWill leave an unfillable hole,Just remember this simple example,And see how it humbles your soul.

Take a bucket and fill it with water,Put your hand in up to your wrists,The hole that you make when you leave it,Is the measure of how much you’ll be missed.You may thrash all you want when you enter,You may stir up the waters galore,But just wait for a momentAnd it is still the same as before.

The moral of this is quite simple,Just do the best that you can.But please always rememberThere is no irreplaceable man

**************************************************Reader feedback:

Mr. Burleson,

I'm curious about your latest blog post, in which you transcribed a poem that's posted on a building at RIT. Several of my friends and I graduated from RIT just yesterday. Many of us took courses in database, and since our department focuses its attention primarily on the Oracle DBMS, we found the information you've posted on your websites to be indispensable. One might say that you've become a cult hero of the RIT IT department. We've paid many tributes, in the form of a giant poster on the wall of a lab, an April Fool's Day prank, and a web search tool targeted only at your sites (to filter out all the other crap).

I subscribed to your blog a few weeks ago when one of my friends described it as quite entertaining. You can imagine my surprise when I read the first line of your latest post! I noticed something else about your history while trying to locate your email address. None of us was aware that you spent a significant period of your professional career in Rochester. So, my question for you is: have you visited RIT recently, or is the poem something that you recall from when you were in the area previously?

Thanks for all the help you've given us along the way, and for the continued quality of the content you post to your blog.

Zack

>> So, my question for you is: have you visited RIT recently, or is the poem something that you recall from when you were in the area previously?

Before your time (late 1980's), I taught the graduate school introduction to IT course at RIT, and I remembered this great poem from the plaque on the business school building!

I'm now convinced that the key to success in life is delayed gratification! Stidies say that it's more important than IQ, but without the ability to delay gratification, success can be impossible.

In a nutshell, those who resist hedonism get far more gooidies on the back-end!

I remember being very resentful of my friends while I was slaving-away in College, and it's very hard to delay gratification when you are young, watching my working friends buy new clothes and brand-new cars.

But I knew the secret; the longer that you can delay gratification, the farther you will go!

Take the time to read all six pages of this article, it could change your life.

It’s so very true, delayed gratification is the key!

Even after college, many of my colleagues went forth into business ventures half-ripe, while I bided my time, getting many years of high-quality experiences before starting my own business. While my MBA classmates started labeling themselves “experts” after writing a few magazine articles, I waited until I had authored over a dozen books.

As my grandpa used to say “There is always room at the top”, but you gotta realize that “time takes time”. . .

I love fusion cuisines, the more stranger the better, Swiss-Swahili, German-Ghana, you name it, but none is stranger and more wonderful than the Javanese-Holland fusion food!

In the early days of WWII (the spring of 1942) when the Japanese invaders were chasing the 5th air force across Indonesia, the American airmen landed in Java, a picturesque spot where the war had not yet reached.

My father told me the tale of how, after half starving in the jungles, they got to Java where they had real stores and wonderful restaurants, and even telephones! (a three minute telephone call cost over $30, more than a month’s pay, but they were able to call home). All this normalcy, right in the shadow of an imminent Japanese invasion!

One Dutch delicacy in Java is the reistaffel, a multi-course fusion cuisine of Asian and Dutch influences.

An Amsterdam reistaffel

Half starved and under 150 pounds, my father raved about how delicious reistaffel was; a welcome alternative to their diet of bananas and monkeys . . .

When Janet and I were visiting friends in Amsterdam recently, we made sure that we tried this wonderful fusion dish. It takes hours to eat a reistaffel, up to 15 tiny tasting courses, one after the other, each an amazing fusion of Dutch and Javanese spices.

To learn more about the amazing heroes who defended Java against the Japanese, see the fascinating book “Queens Die Proudly”.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

I was always fascinated by people who bet their last dollar and won big. I remember sitting at gaming tables while people play with their rent money in desperate all-or-nothing gambles.

I remember one young lady who was down to her last few bucks, crying and heartbroken that she has squandered her rent money. We all chipped-in so she could play one last round, and she hit, winning back her $400.

Her response? Let it ride! Some people never learn . . . .

Remember Fred Smith, the MBA student who got a C- on his idea for FedEx?

When my friend learned that I was in graduate school, they would chide me “So, say something intelligent”, and I would always respond with “Ontology recapitulates phylogeny” or my all-time favorite, “tachistoscopic episcotisters enable subliminal perception”.

It’s a super-fast shutter that flashes images very fast, right at the edge of perception, and a tachistoscopic episcotister is used in important psychological research on human perception.

Remember the Psychology studies that led to the legend of widespread subliminal perception, like inserting a “Coca Cola” ad every 10th frame in a movie, and witnessing thirsty customers buying Cokes at the snack bar?

The reality is a bit more subtle. Just as bored GI’s noticed the naked lady in the Camel cigarette logo, people strive to place hidden messages in logos. But as Sigmund Fraud one said, “Sometimes a train is just a train”, and horny guys will always invent sexual images inside ambiguous logos:

Consider this one, with a hidden arrow inside:

Upon close inspection, do you see the “arrow” that is formed between the X and the E?Also, this one is cleaver, showing the outline of Australia:

Thursday, May 14, 2009

We recently had three ducks join us at the ranch; at least I think that they are ducks.

Alexander the Swoose was half swan and half goose, but these ain’t mallards!

They appear to be the product of some unholy union between ducks, vultures and turkeys.

Anyhow, all heck broke loose last night!

Pet ducks for dogs!

Well, last night one of the ducks was in the back yard when we let the Rottweiler’s out. Feathers went flying, everywhere, as Bear, mother to every living critter, snatched up a duck gently by his neck!

Rotties are very motherly - They will even nurse kittens!

The duck went limp, from shock, no doubt, and we thought he might have died from fear!

Little did this refugee from a fricassee know at the time, but Bear has huge maternal instincts, and she just wanted to lick it and love it! Sho’ nuff, she took the startled duck to her kennel, pinned it down and started licking the shocked duck it all over!

Evidently, ducks don't like to be licked by large dogs

Now, we don’t allow our pets to have pets, but Bear was not gonna turn lose of this Duck easy! She loved it, and started growling “My Duck” when Janet commanded “Leave it!”.

We had to get out the whip, and Bear finally turned the poor ole duck loose!

I gonna guess that we won’t be seeing those ducks in the backyard again anytime soon!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

The state law passed, 37 to 9 (had a few liberals in the mix), an amendment to place the Ten Commandments on the front entrance to the state capitol. The feds in D.C., along with the ACLU, said it would be a mistake. Hey this is a conservative state, basedon Christian values...!

Guess what...........We did it anyway.

We recently passed a law in the state to incarcerate all illegal immigrants, and ship them back to where they came from, unless they want to get a green card and become an American citizen. They all scattered. Hope we didn't send any of them to your state. This was against the advice of the Federal Government, and the ACLU, they said it would be a mistake.

Guess what..........we did it anyway..

Yesterday we passed a law to include DNA samples from any and all illegals to the Oklahoma database, for criminal investigative purposes. Pelosi said it was unconstitutional. Guess what.........We did it anyway. Several weeks ago, we passed a law, declaring Oklahoma as a Sovereign state, not under the Federal Government directives. That, for your information, makes Oklahoma and Texas the only states to do so.

Guess what.........More states are likely to follow. Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, both Carolina's, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, just to name a few. Should Mississippi act, so will Florida.

Even in the 1960’s there were still pockets of ethnic groups in America, the Swedes of Kansas, the Germans of Wisconsin, the Cherokee of North Carolina, and dozens of others niches where people retained their cultural identity wel into the 20th century . . .

But as time passes, regional identities are being lost at a rapid rate.

This fascinating chart notes now people identified themselves in the 2000 census, very interesting.

The most interesting part is that many people of early British and Irish descent identified themselves solely as “American”, as-if they have been completely assimilated:

And let’s not forget the “belts”. Everyone knows about the Bible belt, the rust belt and the corn belt, but the “scum belt” is a new one: